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HFM’s 100th Post Contest!

I started this blog in November of last year. For the past few weeks, I’ve been debating if I wanted to celebrate the birthday of my blog, or the 100th post. And wouldn’t you know that the 100th post is scheduled to hit on Halloween?! So in honor of my many hours of trying desperately to be witty (but mostly truthful) on this blog, I’ve decided to give away a $25 gift card to Target!

To enter: comment below with your favorite Halloween memory!

It could be your best costume, the time you won at bobbing for apples or when you and your sister scared the neighbors wearing trash bag clown outfits from the dollar store. The evening of October 30th, I’ll use a random number generator to choose a winner out of the folks who commented. And I’ll announce the winner in my 100th post on October 31st. I want to hear your spooky stories!

And I want to say thank you to the readers who continually slog through my posts here. It’s been a great year to be me. I’ve had heartache, elation and everything in between. You’re the ones who have read it all. Without you, I wouldn’t stay on task with my writing. And without being able to connect to other TTC’ers, I probably would have given up hope long ago. So thank you.

Thank you for reading and for sharing your story. You truly shine. 😀

Make sure to comment below before Oct. 30! This gift card is burning a hole in my pocket!!!

*This post is NOT sponsored by Target. The gift card is just a little something I’m doing on my own.*

It’s actually from just a few years ago. I was giving out candy whilst my husband was taking our daughter around.

Anyways, the wall opposite my front door is filled with floor to ceiling bookcases and filled to nearly over flowing with books, CDs, and videos. When I was giving out candy, one of the little pink princesses asked me if I lived in a library. I told her I did because I was a librarian.

My favorite Halloween memory was when my mom pulled some strings to get me an actual costume from the show “Cats.” I was 14 and trying to skate the line between cute/mildly-sexy and geek, so when my mom surprised me hours before trick-or-treat time with the costume, it blew me away. Also, her makeup artist friend from the show came by and spruced me up so I looked super authentic. The best part? Halloween is my birthday, so it was the best gift ever!

My favorite Halloween memory is my son’s 2nd trick or treating adventure. Torin was so cute! He was dressed as a lion, hairy mane and all. He couldn’t say trick or treat yet, but he could roar. So every house we went to he ROARED like a little lion.

As a little girl walking the neighborhood and going into a screen porch to enjoy cider and doughnuts. Now I realize how safe it was at that time and wish that safe feeding for my grandchildren and gran grans.

My big sister went away to college at Central Michigan when I was 7. That Halloween, my parents and I made the few hour drive to visit her. She dressed me up as a black cat and took me door to door, trick or treating in the dorm. Every room was decked out with spooky effects and most everyone was in costume. It felt straight out of a horror movie (though I didn’t really get horror movies yet) and I couldn’t WAIT to go to college!!!

My ex and I used to square dance, so we always tried to come up with couples costumes for the dances. We were a Civil war officer and a Southern bell, we were Al Capone and his moll… And one year we went as an organ grinder and I had to be the monkey. But my favorite was the year I got payback. I dressed up as Little Bo Peep and he had to be the baby lamb.

Choosing to be He-Man for Halloween and not wanting to wear my costume at the preschool parade because I thought everyone would make fun of me for being a boy. So my poor dad came to the parade to take pictures and there I was in my regular clothes.

We used to go to my aunts house for Halloween and all the adults would stand at the doors of the house and outbuildings and my cousins,siblings and i would trick or treat that way. I guess now it seems a little lame but back then that was way fun!! 🙂

My dad LOVES Halloween. It should probably be noted that he’s a minister in The United Methodist Church. Each year, he would decorate the porch using a blue light bulb, carve jack-o-lanterns, make scary faced luminaria, and put the various decorations up. Then, he would put on his black preacher’s robe, wrap his bald head in something black (usually a sweater) and put on a Lone Ranger style mask. When the doorbell rang, he would crouch down and slowly rise up to his whole 6’3″ while in his bass voice, do a creepy “yeeeeeeeessssssssss?”. Small children ran from our door. One of the neighbor’s grandchildren started telling people that his grandma didn’t live next door to the minister, she lived next door to the monster.

One Halloween, my youngest son, who was seven at the time, had no idea what to dress up as. I made suggestion after suggestion, and he wanted none of them. Suddenly, it was Halloween and he still had no costume. My oldest son already had his all picked out.

The morning of Halloween, my youngest was sobbing because he knew that if he didn’t have a costume, he would not be able to participate in the school’s Halloween parade. Soon my eldest son’s friends came to the door, so they could all walk to the bus stop together. When one of the friends saw Alex crying, he simply said, “Dude. Be something simple. Like… like… a bag of garbage or something.”

*LIGHTBULB MOMENT*

I grabbed a Hefty bag, cut holes into it for his legs, and made sure his legs could fit. he helped me grab some ‘clean trash’: empty pop liter bottles and I rinsed them out. He he saw some pasta boxes in the cupboard, so I emptied the contents into Ziplocks and used those. Toilet paper rolls, tea bags, all kinds of ‘trash’ was hot-glued. I even found an old cap and hot glued pasta, and other bits of ‘trash’ to that. Yes, all of this was done before he left for school.

Not only did he win best costume in his class, he won Best Costume for the entire school. Not bad for a last-minute idea, huh.

I think my favorite memory of Halloween is just the years I spent helping my parent’s decorate the house. I would always make them buy the fake cobwebs, and string them around outside. My mom and I would get a black light for the porch. My mom had this orange Halloween cassette tape that she would play, but it would always upset me. It just had spooky sounds. Chains rattling. Wind blowing. Witches cackling. It also had the sound of a cat crying and I hated that sound, it really upset me! Heehee.

hahah. Yeah. My parents get flooded with kids. Kids from across the city come to the neighborhood because it’s a safe place to trickortreat. My mom hands out several hundred pieces of candy!! I always think she should buy more because she always runs out.
We live in “townhouse hell” which is like, a neighborhood undergoing gentrification and it’s mostly townhomes with young people with no kids, so we don’t have any trick or treators at all.

I have a couple but I know it can be only one. I guess I’ll tell you this one. Me and my best friend had decided that we would go trick or treating as a two headed woman. So we found a really big woman’s dress and we both climbed in.
She and I fit both our heads through the neck hole and each of us had a sleeve to stick one of our arms out of. Things were great until we tried to get out. She and I fell on the floor and rolled around stuck in that dress together for more than an hour! Needless to say, we decided against that costume!!!

My favorite Halloween memory is when we went to the haunted house in Yorkville (I think that’s where it was, the barn that was falling down) and being chased by a guy with a chainsaw, getting goosed, and having a blast!! I actually found a picture from that night!